Is this synthesis and collaboration helpful? Are any of the results and insights of value and help us to better understand and deconstruct the meaning and function of rock art? Or are these scientific probings into the human mind of little real relvance to a substantive understanding of aboriginal cosmology, ritual, and religion?
I suggest that affective neuroscience, neuroscience of self-relatedness, neuroscience of animacy, and neuroscience of actual art-making as well as more frequent (and now popular) research on neuroscience of art-appreciation, is needed to supplement cognitive neuroscience of religion, which, to my mind, doesn't add much to understanding hunter-gatherer cosmology, ritual, religion as might be expressed in rock art and its paleoanthropological contexts. Cognitive neuroscience of religion which consists of about a half-dozen hypotheses attempting to 'explain' religious phenomena, is currently confronted by new research in neuroscience that appears to make all the current hypotheses problematic, if not refuted. For example, the Barrett et al 'hyperactive agency model', seems falsified by a recent neuroimaging study of subjects 'communicating with spirits of the dead', which resulted in finding that the theory-of-mind hub for behavior (agency) prediction was actually reduced in activation. In other words the study provides evidence for exactly the opposite hypothesis of Barrett. Each of the other main hypotheses has recent social-statistical or neuroscience studies contradicting their hypotheses.
James thanks for your update. Please give me a call sometime would love to reconnect. 805.312.2261
I hate to dampen efforts at attempts at rock art interpretation, but it is impossible not to subconsciously inject biases, personal and professional, into our evaluation. And it is impossible to know what exactly went on in the mind of the artist. Ask an artist what they thought while creating the work and you might be surprised how different it was to what you think.
Archaeological fieldwork is more scientifically based, yet it too has misconceptions, not just personal but also professional. Here is a reference to a paper by a late colleague who carefully excavated an historic camp and then asked its former inhabitant what really happened. He concluded that:
I. Items were misidentified & assigned to the wrong functional categories.
II. False associations were made between items.
III. Activity areas were interpreted incorrectly.
IV. The relationships between activity areas were misinterpreted.
Bonnichsen, R. 1973. Millie’s Camp: an experiment in archaeology. World Archaeology 4:277-291.
I have mentioned many times that we must first date the art to know the ‘climate of the time’ before we can even attempt to begin to understand what the artist thought. Even then it is hearsay.
Yo preguntaría si el rock pesado altera o modifica la conducta.
También preguntaría si el contenido de esta música altera la conducta.
Una disculpa por mi comentario anterior, me confundí con la traducción pues en un momento decía rock art.
Respecto a que la neurociencia pueda explicar los hechos religiosos, me parece que tendría que considerarse, en el caso de la religión católica, por ejemplo: si la neurociencia puede explicar el estado de gracia. La gracia -entendida debidamente-, perfecciona la naturaleza humana. Este argumento es fundamental
José Manuel Giménez Amaya y Sergio Sánchez-Migallón tienen un libro publicado titulado: "De la Neurociencia a la neuroética. Narrativa científica y reflexión filosófica". El libro ha sido publicado en 2010 y forma parte de la Serie: Ciencias, de las Ediciones Universidad de Navarra.
Dopamine, persistence hunting and engraved rock images in the Karoo region, South Africa
In terms of the question posed, it seems to me that we need to remain open-minded. For example the trance hypothesis, presented and argued by David Lewis-Williams over the past two decades, has yielded significant insight into the nature of rock paintings. The basic premise of the trance model is derivative of neuroscientific research. As an explanatory frame-work it is persuasive because both 19th century ethnography (The Digital Bleek and Lloyd at: http://lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.ac.za/) and remnant San Bushman communities living in the Kalahari provide supporting endorsement. The latter, additionally, goes some way in allaying an anxiety that is concerned with the real dangers of reading the present into the past. But there is another worry, which is the blanket application of neuroscientific explanation, based on the assumption that what happens in the brain has universal applicability; without variation - across cultures, regions and even between people and people. My own inquiry links a set of engraved images with the production of dopamine, generated during persistence hunting (endurance running). This is the body’s response to overheating and it affects cognition – working memory, motor planning, cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and temporal analysis (Previc 1999). This closely grouped image set is likely related to regional conditions, which match the prerequisites for persistence hunting, namely extreme heat and open (semi-desert) terrain. There is a basis in neuroscience in this case but it is not the full story, the context is equally important.
I think it's critical.
The use of neurosciences in all its aspects (Neurology, Psychology, Linguistics, Evolutionary Biology) together with social Anthropology, forms an interdisciplinary study necessary to study human cognitive evolution.
Whoever is interested can see two of my works on this subject.
https://www.researchgate.net/project/transdisciplinary-study-on-the-origin-and-development-of-cognition-of-the-genus-Homo
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/264860404_Las_conductas_simbolicas_en_el_paleolitico_Un_intento_de_comprension_y_analisis_desde_el_estructuralismo_funciona_Espacio_Tiempo_y_Forma_Serie_I_Prehistoria_y_arqueologia_Nueva_epoca_n_4
Article Las conductas simbólicas en el paleolítico. Un intento de co...
Hello everyone, a few observations, for what they are worth:
- All evidential strands should be examined
- Each rock art corpus needs to be treated on its specifics
- Tthere needs to be both necessary and sufficient linkage between a rock art (iconography, placement, means of production, relevant ethnography etc) to any specific evidential strand.
- Gatherer-hunter rock arts tend to evince particular human-landcscape-more than human relations
- Rock art production is a neglected field but potentially the most illuminating for this topic.
Best
Sven
yes, the rock art art is a way of communication and its understanding through scientific analysis and study will be an approach of further elaboration and explanation of the human past.
A wonderful open question, which will no doubt receive the usual wide spectrum of yeah and nay answers.
I also have wondered more than once how a scholarly person can look at the walls in the caves of Lascaux and digress on what a caveman was thinking 30,000 years ago when he painted The Sorcerer. Obviously, the scholar must resort to some intuitive interpretation a.k.a. a good guess. An educated guess, but still a guess.
Cognitive neuroscience is surely an attempt to inject more objectivity in rock art study to avoid the blunders that otherwise often emanate from subjective thinking. The only drawback I see is that neuroscience is based on modern data analysis. Projecting a currently advanced understanding of cognition backward 30,000 years ago is still indulging in educated guesses. Or has someone dissected the neuropaths of cavemen and discovered how their minds worked?
You made a good final comment, Hugh. Projecting modern conclusions on cognition into the distant past, especially 17,000 years ago at Lascaux, requires much more than rock art, especially when dealing with such complex art as the Sorcerer. One must know how the people lived – their options and their limitations, something possible with excavation, dating and analysis, and something rarely done by rock art enthusiasts. Lascaux was occupied by reindeer hunters in winter when the animals portrayed on its walls were absent. They were present further south and likely hunted in warmer seasons. Some call this sympathetic magic where they were dreaming of a successful hunt in spring. Hence, they were done from memory which is acute among hunters regarding their game – witness the dying or dead bison at Alta Mira which may have been done after the hunt. Lascaux’s staple of reindeer was absent on its walls because I think an artist prefers a colourful or more dangerous subject rather than an easily killed animal communally hunted by the hundreds. Other staples like bread or a bowl of rice do occur in pictures, but would rarely capture the imagination or entice repeated examination.
Hello Canada,
Was Lascaux only (g) 17,000 BP? I must have been thinking of Cosquer, which was first dated c.30,000 BP but now I see has been degraded to 19,000-27,000 BP according to the Bradshaw Foundation.
Actually, the fluctuating dating of rock art also adds to the controversy over "flashback" cultural attributions. I am not convinced that anthropologists and archeologists completely follow the same timeline on the evolution of human thought. Maybe in 27K BP the artist believed he was living side by side with ghosts while the 19K BP artist did not because he did not possess the same bicameral mind as his ancestor. (I am currently reading a lot of Jaynes' works on that).
Eight thousand years difference must surely be meaningful to an anthropologist studying human psychological evolution; whereas, the archeologists are undisturbed by errors of what is for them very small magnitude.
There is no evidence for "evolution of thought" in rock art, or in art, or in other cultural media (ritual, myth, building site spatial use). Differences in technology are all due to population density, and follow a predictable curve, from clan to empire.
Differences in styling follow mutation cycles, which are inherently meaningless.
A good source on various views on your question, is the anthropology journal Expression, where I have contributed six papers, including one on the recently discovered Younger Dryas engraving in the Basque area of Spain, that contain about 60% of the core content of the universal standard of subconscious elements in visual expression. Artworks today do the same, including frequencies of each of about 70 known elements of the 'grammar' of art.
For criticism of the trance school of interpretation, see Anne Solomon's papers of the last decade or so. Artists in general do not sympathise with explanations of rock art as resulting from entoptics, modified by local cultures into fads. Nor do they use art primarily as a communication medium. It has larger roles in individual and collective therapy, which are beyond conscious motivations, and thus beyond translation. Much like ritual and myth are beyond translation. A picture paints a thousand words, and much beyond words, from the province of archetype.
See also my book Mindprint (2014, Lulu.com), including 100 demonstrations of the structure in rock art works worldwide, each compared to formal or religious or political or commodified artworks from around the world. Art is not a record of man groping for meaning, or for communication. My recent paper in Expression is on semiotics (the meaning of meaning) in art. I found no core difference between artworks in the ice Age, Younger Dryas, Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age, and modern eras.
Instead I found five layers of structure, highly predictable.
Sven,
To give a specific example as to how visual neuroscience has helped us to understand why animals are depicted in certain ways in rock art, namely the almost universal employment of the sideways profile outline view, this is reflected in the way the visual brain processes information for rapid and efficient recognition purposes. This is based on "bottom up" processing that provides a more secure foundation than "top down" approaches. See, for example, my many previous publications on this issue.
Derek